Kate Winslet on Nude Scenes: “It’s a profoundly bizarre thing to do”

I can’t tell you how many males my age or younger have told me that seeing Kate Winslet topless in Titanic was the first time they saw a nude woman in a movie.

If you can say the same, I guess you’re pretty lucky that your first glimpse of a naked woman in a movie happened to be the beautiful Kate Winslet.

As a result the Titanic scene has achieved a kind of iconic status, but that wasn’t even Winslet’s first time baring herself on screen: she first appeared topless in 1994’s Heavenly Creatures and has in several other films since.

So it’s a bit surprising to find out that in an interview with V Magazine that Winslet doesn’t even like nude scenes in movies!

She explains, “I hate it! Listen make no mistake, I just get on it. I just go in and say ‘Oh f*ck’ let’s do it.’ and boom. If you complain about it or procrastinate it’s not going to go away. Its [sic] a profoundly bizarre thing to do. As actors you talk about it all the time. You can literally be tangled in sheets, and you turn to the other actor and say ‘What the f*ck are we doing?’ Dear Mum, at work today I had so-and-so’s left nut sack pressed against my cheek. It’s sort of unethical if you think about it in those terms.” Yes, I certainly imagine that having someone’s nut sack pressed against you could make it a bad day at work. Kate doesn’t clean up her language when she talks about the challenging roles she hopes that she will continue to face in her career, saying, “I hope I am shitting myself over the characters I play for the rest of my life. Because the day I go ‘Oh yeah, that’s going to be a piece of pie’, why f*cking bother? If you do that, you do not learn. I hope I’m always learning something. So I won an Oscar. It’s amazing. I’ve got that for the rest of my life for a performance I am proud of. It nearly killed me. I am really proud of the film. That’s it, moving on.”

So since nude scenes don’t really seem to be Winslet’s favorite thing about her job, it’s great that she can find happiness in other aspects that don’t involve the nether regions.

‘Phantom Thread’ Star Lesley Manville: “It’s so easy to make someone bad look good on film. In theatre, there’s no hiding place”

"Filming is different. You’re getting a moment right. You can go in and create something very good, very quickly. That’s a different challenge to having five, six weeks to rehearse a play.” - Lesley Manville